I’m playing at Pyramid Atlantic in Silver Spring, Maryland on 2 May 2015, in my Kantoendrato guise (my ambient alter ego). It’s a great bill, a fun, relaxing format, and everything starts at 8PM. $10 and well worth it.

Played a brief, but energetic, set on Friday, 27 February 2015 at Electric Maid in Takoma Park as part of the Baltimore SDIY group’s 2 day winter electronic music event. First go-round for my Kantoendrato alter-ego (to make PR a bit easier, I’m going to be going by Kantoendrato for my ambient and experimental electronic sets and by my given name for my storytelling work), and was delighted to work with alternating.bit for the set.

I’m playing in this year’s Electronica Fest at the National Electronics Museum, in Linthicum, Maryland (near BWI Airport), on Saturday, 8 November 2014, in the 4:30-5:00 slot. The Fest is an amazing day-long celebration of electronic and electroacoustic music that runs from noon till ten o’clock and gives audiences an opportunity to hear a dizzying array of genres touched by the thrilling spark of electricity for a delightfully paltry ten bucks. The music ranges from the downright lovely to the down-home peculiar and the atmosphere just can’t be matched by anything else going on in the region. It’s a great Saturday for sound.

I’m thrilled to be playing with the inimitable Keith Sinzinger once again, this time as a participant in the Sonic Circuits Festival 2014, a three-day assortment of aural delights held from 3-5 October 2014 at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, 8230 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910. We’re on during the final evening of the festival, on Sunday, 5 October, performing under our collective monicker, Fast Against The Wall, in a playful set of peculiar noises, particular grooves, and happy accidents. We’ll be in good company, and the folks behind Sonic Circuits bring together the best audiences for new and experimental music in the area and the best performers. I’m always delighted by the variety and quality of the music Sonic Circuits puts on, and I am happy as a dang lark to be playing.

Here’s a recording of my first reading of five little stories about falling in love with noise and electricity, to the accompaniment of digital sound and signal processing. I performed the pieces on Friday, 5 Sep 2014, as part of the Electro-Music 2014 Conference and Festival in Huguenot NY.

I’ve got a lot going on in the next four months—gigs booked in September, October, and November!

I’ll be playing at the super-amazing Electro-Music Festival 2014 in Huguenot, NY, a three day campout of unbelievable musicians performing, connecting, and collaborating up in the woods in NY state. It’s an immersive experience for musicians that’s just lovely and embracing and full of all sorts of electric music, played out in a great setting.

Last year was my first, and I just enjoyed the company and camraderie, but this year, on Friday, September 5th at 5:30PM, I’m premiering a little work in progress, All Night Radio, a short cycle of spoken word storytelling on my love of noise set to the tune of digital modular synthesis.

The event opens at 7:45 each night, and tickets are just $10, with five diverse and electrifying musical acts in each. Fast Against The Wall is scheduled for the second set of Friday night, and there’s always amazing talent on stage for these events. The music ranges from noisy experimental to smooth dance grooves and whole worlds in-between.

I’ve been largely concentrating on beatless, long-form drone and atmosphere music for a while, but this is set to be a playful departure into herky-jerky grooveland and I’m really enthusiastic about the weird, alien energy we’re conjuring up.

I’m making a point to get myself out there in 2014, and to that end, I’m starting a pledge drive of a sort. I’ve been writing since…well, since always, almost, but I’ve been doing spoken word/storytelling performances, with and without music, for twenty years, keeping a regular online journal for thirteen years, making slow, quiet music, exploring strange new worlds, making silly videos, and otherwise sharing the things I love about being a citizen of reality, but I have to admit I’ve not done it in an organized, comprehensible way.

I’m knuckling down.

I’m consolidating and streamlining, trying out some new outlets, and working to make it easy for you, the folks who’ve encouraged my raconteurship over the years, and new friends who’ve just come aboard for the ride. I cut my teeth online at Livejournal, but unfortunately, Livejournal’s not what it used to be, so I’m going to be primarily posting new material on a few sites and making my LJ a private space for my friends and family. I’d also made a stab at using the blogger platform, under the monicker “bluestarlounge,” but I had a hard time getting traction there, so I’m concentrating on new modes.

I maintain an info site at joebelknapwall.com. You may notice that I now have a middle name, and I’m using it because it makes it easier to find me on Google and other search engines, for which “joe” and “wall” are awfully vague search terms. It’s all part of the whole “branding” thing, which make me scowl at myself, but if I can’t be found, I can’t get my work to new audiences. The site will continue to be a general news and biographical info site, with archives of some of my favorite material for various media, announcements of events, projects, and other useful data. My previous info site, joewall.com, now links into this site, with all of the original material, as well as new material.

To make it easier to keep up in the Facebook age, I’ve created a special Facebook page linked to my info site and my twitter account, at https://www.facebook.com/joebelknapwall, which is a simple one-stop-shop to get updates on all my projects, events, and twitter updates.

To find my day-to-day writings, stories, music, and other updates, I’m using several outlets, which I’ll list here:

I resisted Twitter for a long time and for the usual reasons, in large part because I’m fairly described as “verbose,” but it is a splendid platform for linking one’s work, sharing one’s favorite things, and otherwise honing the fine art of the perfect Dorothy Parkeresque one-line party zinger. My Twitter feed tends to be a bit surreal, often amusing, and it’s a great clearinghouse for letting people know what I’m up to right now. I promise it isn’t all just announcements of what I’m eating, wearing, or am mad about (well, there’s some of that).

I’m a fan of what the developers of Medium are doing, which is to set up an adjunct to Twitter for more detailed writing, with a nice clean design and the additions of a system for collective curation of topics and a helpful tag on each post with an approximate time it’ll take you to read the posting. I’ll probably be simultaneously posting to both Tumblr and Medium, with Medium more focused on the shorter stories.

I’ve embarked on a new project, dubbed “Nowhere Joe,” which combines the pitch I made to a travel network for a travel program about going nowhere, or otherwise using the idea of travel to make everyday life more interesting, and a sort of household-hints journal loosely organized around the idea of living well on little money. It’s a bit different from some of the excellent sites out there on simple living in that it’s not a compendium of tips and tricks as much as it is a means of sharing the why of a humble, adventurous life. I’ll definitely share my own little methodologies, recipes, and shortcuts, but more than that, I want to cover the rewards of making the best with what you have on hand.

I’ve also created a corresponding Facebook page specifically for the Nowhere Joe project, and you can find it at https://www.facebook.com/nowherejoe. Like my professional page listed above, it’ll pass along my updates, links to new stories on nowherejoe.com, and relevant info. In addition, there’s a nice mechanism built into the site that will help you to share any post you found entertaining or informative—just scroll to the bottom of the post, and there’s little set of icons to share the post with your friends on a number of outlets. The green icon at the end offers an even more fully expanded listing of ways to share, so if you like something, pass it around!

The easiest way to keep up, if you’re on Facebook, is to “like” my professional Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/joebelknapwall, which will get you notifications of things I’m doing, my Twitter updates, links to new material posted online, and listings of upcoming events and appearances, as well as updates on Nowhere Joe, my videos, and my musical projects. If you prefer to primarily engage with my Nowhere Joe blog project, “like” that Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/nowherejoe, which will be more specific, though there will be some cross-posting between the two.

There’s a mechanism on Nowhere Joe to collect email addresses (a bar at the bottom when you visit the site), and I will never sell or otherwise misuse your email, but if you sign up, I can email very occasional updates and announcements directly to you (and you can easily unsubscribe using the links in the email, should you decide to). I will probably be adding a similar email list to my professional site, and the two will be essentially connected.

Here’s my pitch—If you like what I do, and enjoy my stories, music, and other things, please “like” me on Facebook, “follow” me on Twitter, Tumblr, and Medium, sign up for my email list, and otherwise share share share anything of mine that you enjoy with anyone you know who might like it. It’s easy, it helps me to build an audience so I can eventually spend less time in my so-called “day job” and more time writing and performing and telling you stories.

I played a quirky set of warped sounds and modulated atmospheres at Club K in Baltimore on Friday, 14 June 2013, using the small rig I’ve been calling the lotus toolbox. For your listening pleasure, it’s right here!

Posted on2013/06/07|Comments Off on Live at the controls of the lotus toolbox, 14 June 2013.

I’m excited to be playing a live ambient set in Baltimore on Friday, 14 June 2013. It’s part of a two-day series of concerts curated by the Baltimore SDIY group, called the Baltimore Electronic Music 2013 Summerfest Concerts, on 14 & 15 June 2013 at Club K.

I’m in the line-up from 9:30-10:00 on Friday, but the events run from 8-11 each night, with an array of electronic musicians ranging from the experimental to the beatworthy. The SDIY group does a great job of mashing a lot of genres together in these events, so you’re almost certain to find something that stokes the fires.

I’ll be playing sort of cascading shambling digital slow music with electronics using the lotus toolbox, a stripped-down live rig I’ve been refining with the intention of getting my gear simplified to the point that I can fit all I need across the seat of a motorcycle.

C’mon down and see me!

Comments Off on Live at the controls of the lotus toolbox, 14 June 2013.